by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Here we are, at last, with a new version of ‘Hail Caesar‘ by Warlord Games. I hesitate to say ‘Hail Caesar 2‘ or call this book a sequel since even though this is an update to the original book, the main rules remain pretty much the same.

The original Hail Caesar book came out in 2014, and while it’s certainly time for a refresh, you can easily still play Hail Caesar with either book, though the newer one opens up Sieges and Late Medieval, clarifies diagrams, and includes generic scenarios.  Let’s dive right in.

By Mitch Reed

Twilight Struggle, which came out in 2005 is one of the most iconic and popular war games in our community, however, it is not a game that I would expose new gamers to or someone who wants to play a quick game.

This has now changed with Jason Matthews’ newest game, Twilight Struggle Red Sea: The Conflict in the Horn of Africa (TWRS), which is a great intro game to our hobby but also a game that you can finish in less than 40 minutes.

By Mitch Reed

Recently I had to spend some time recuperating at home from “cave cough” which is prevalent in our West Virginia mountain bunker. This gave me the chance to check out the new release from Micro Prose called Second Front. I had the game on my wish list since the first news of the game came out well over a year ago. I was able to spend a good amount of time on the game and discovered how much fun it was.

By Mark Greenwald

Crossing the Line is part of a series of games developed by Vuca Simulations in Germany. I came across it a few years back and put it on my Christmas wish list. But a second edition with a mounted map was just published this year. So I picked it up for myself.

It arrived last week and as soon as I could find table space, I set it up to do some solo learning.

Vuca Simulations is probably a company most have never heard of, but they are putting out some really nice games with nice reviews.  This series includes two other games right now, Across the Bug River – Volodymyr-Volynski 1941 and Operation Theseus – Gazala 1942. It is an operational-sized hex and counter wargame with a nice twist on the standard IGOUGO turn sequence.

By Richard Steer

The Late-War era of Flames of War V4 is rapidly drawing to a close with the upcoming release of Berlin: Soviet. This book picks up where the Bagration series left off and represents the Red Army in its campaigns in Europe in 1945 leading to the final destruction of Nazi Germany.

The pattern that V4 has followed has been to support each book with the release of new plastic kits. Berlin is no exception, with the main new plastic kit being the lend-lease M4A2 Sherman.

“At least I know where bottom of the ocean is.” 

Sergey Titov, on Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

By Patrick S. Baker

“Bottom of the ocean” is correct. This 2003 racing game has an aggregate 8 out of 100 score on Metacritic and reportedly a 1 out of 10 on the now-defunct Gamerrankings.com website. Both of these scores are the lowest in history. One reviewer stated that “Big Rigs is so devoid of design, game play, structure, aesthetic or functioning technology that it can’t be called a game at all.”

By Mitch Reed

I have been a fan of the COIN (Counter Insurgency) games for some time now and I was excited to be able to meet Steve Rangazas and play one of the games from his upcoming 4-pack, The British Way from GMT and should be shipping sometime later this year.

The game harkens back to the days of the old SPI Quad-Games series where you get four games in a single box. The British Way covers the insurgencies as the sunset of the British Empire and covers the conflicts in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, and Palestine.

by Mitch Reed

We recently got a draft of the NUTS! 4th Edition which is currently wrapping up its Kickstarter Campaign. NUTS! Has been around since 2006 and this new edition represents the latest work of its developers to get a good WW2 miniatures skirmish game into the hands of our community.

Having played many WW2 skirmish games over the years, I can admit that many games share some of the same feel as others in the market and the experience often gets stale. NUTS! does not fall into that paradigm. While it shares many mechanics with other games (hard to avoid), it does have a lot of different rules that piqued my interest.

By Kreighton Long

The Italian Army, or Regio Esercito, was the first military in the world to mass-produce camouflage equipment for their soldiers. The M1929 telo mimetico was utilized by Italian soldiers and paratroopers as well as by Italy’s German ally during the course of World War Two.

For my Italian paratrooper army project I knew I needed to commit hard to the camouflage pattern and after a few trial runs incorporating feedback I reached a scheme that was close to accurate while still being doable.

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Here we go, another game of Pike & Shotte by Warlord Games. This time we ‘run what we brung’. In other words, everything we have painted hit the table in a pitched battle. Scott has even managed to base all his units (since we saw in the first game). He is just awaiting flags to finish the units.

Scott is freshly back from the UK, where he was deployed for about a year. He was a member of the Abingdon Wargaming Club while posted to the UK and brought us back some shirts!